Hawaii schedule story gets bigger with every missed deadline

OOPS. The fax machine was blinking. No paper. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's where the 2007 Hawaii football schedule was. I rushed to get some paper (how does this thing work again?), pushed it in, shoved the drawer back in place. There! Here it comes!

No.

Ran to my computer, hit "refresh" on Hawaiiathletics.com.

No.

You're killing me. It was going to happen any minute. Wasn't it? This was the day. Didn't athletic director Herman Frazier say this was the day, the drop-dead, announce-the-schedule day?

Hold on a second. What? You mean he's said things to this effect before?

Oh.

(Doh!)

So we waited. Waited, with bated breath. Then I got a mint, and resumed waiting.

I felt ridiculous.

Oh, this whole thing reached "ridiculous" status months ago. The procrastinating. The hopeful deadlines thrown out there, then missed, time and again. The assurances. Then it was the WAC that was holding things up.

It's tough to take this circus seriously at this point.

I've had a few people tell me that all this waiting is overrated, that this whole schedule scenario has been blown out of proportion, we shouldn't be this worked up about it. OK, valid point.

But it's been Frazier that's made it a big story by the way he's handled it.

For months, he told us he had it all under control. He told us it was all wrapped up, any minute now. He could sign four opponents tomorrow if he wanted. He talked about getting BCS conference teams. By putting it off he could get even better matchups for UH. He told us just trust him, even as time kept passing by and it seemed the evidence was mounting to the contrary.

With every bold assurance (which would eventually fall through, again, and again, and again) he was turning a footnote into 25-point type.

His stance on the matter did not inspire confidence. It did the opposite. It made everyone wonder what the heck was going on.

What the heck was he talking about?

Did this guy have any games?

How bad is this situation really?

Yesterday, we braced ourselves for a schedule filled with Oahu College, Town Team, Pearl Harbor Navy and McKinley Alums.

Now, let's stipulate for the record that this schedule-filling business is a tough undertaking. It is. It isn't easy. Especially here. Especially now. But then, that's why UH hired Herman Frazier.

And the Michigan State thing threw the schedule for a loop. It did. And there were legal issues involved. But that shouldn't have been a surprise. I knew in the third quarter of that flag-filled 2004 game that Michigan State wasn't coming back. Come on. You had to have seen that coming. (And that was one game.)

You know, the way we should have seen it coming yesterday, when once again a completed schedule was not to be. At this point, what else could we expect?

At 5:09 p.m., UH sent out an e-mail. As usual, it was really close. It said that Frazier announced the "Hawaii Athletics Department is awaiting confirmation from a Division I-A non-conference opponent" in order to wrap things up.